Prophetic

I want to recall two mile markers in my life to start with. One is the reading of the book "The Power to Be," by Tom Olbricht 25 years ago, a book based on Jesus' lifestyle from the gospel of Mark; the other is a conversation with a woman named Sharon who taught school in Odessa 20 years ago. The book posed the thought that people should live in the moment rather than depending on and following some rigid schedule in order to be productive. The conversation and subsequent poem by Sharon, "See Me, See Life" referenced people who are very accepting because they don't live with preconceived notions of how others ought to act or converse with you. People should be able to take your words only for the moment and interpret them for what they are. (Boy, this should be a prime directive for translators, but that is a whole other subject, a battle for another day).

I subscribe to both of these ideas, but it's a cognitive accord only. In reality over the years, I have blown off other people because of a schedule. I have come to conversations with a preconceived notion on how it might go since the other person has a track record with me. I have tried to prepare for what might have been said rather than allowing for the moment's negotiation of what actually was being said. I had both an umbrella schedule and a specific schedule. That's what productive people did. I experienced 1 day out of 100 in which I let the day took me where it wanted. Frequently, I saw opportunities to help or to offer input or to prepare for only in retrospect.

So, when I reflect on the two mile-markers of the third decade of my life, I have to wonder if I why those two mile-markers were important to me. I certainly did not let the their message inform my actions. But, maybe I read the material then so that I would be prepared for the present decade of my life.

I just love the technology of the present. Now, I send e-mails that are productive for my work all right, but since they work at bascially instantaneous speed, it leaves time to write (what an anachronism) friends and family - by email of course. Not only is the transmission of the message faster, the painstaking time it took to handwrite drawn out letters has disappeared. Typing is so much faster. Then there's the phone, which has been around a while, but you used to have be around a land line. The cell phone has made that a memory. I can call friends anytime, pretty much anywhere. The other day I received a phone call from a friend in Fort Worth who just wanted to know how to spell a word. Cell phones have made conversations shorter, but much more frequent. And then there is the phenomenon of text messaging. I receive several a day - short little reminders that someone who cares is on the other end. Oh, that's not all. If a person wants to plan anything or assemble a written document of any kind, Googledocs are just the thing. It keeps workers and/or friends in the loop on basically everything even meetings missed. And, I love Twitter. The little details of life or the little tidbits of parts of life can be shared with whoever you wish to share those tidbits with. All of this is only a partial way to keep up. I can shop online from anywhere, remember people with e-cards for their improtant events, keep a transparent log of my life, philosophy, interests, work, etc., by blogging. I can prepare for family vacations through a collaboration center so that one phone call can be made instead of 3. I can choose about any app(lication) I want on a phone so that I can check the temperature, make a calculation, take a movie clip, find a movie, order flight tickets, or google my house on googleearth.

The deliberate world of the late 80s has yielded to a customized, much more seamless, lightning-speed world. I'm not out of breath trying to keep up either. I can keep pace because of the ease of the devices that deliver this new world. I can let the day take me anywhere it wants because its faster and shorter spurts of little information allow me to go several places in a shorter amount of time, breathlessly. I can take people more at face-value with fewer preconceptions because text-messaging, emails, IM, short phone calls allow me fewer words and tones of voices to judge them by. I'm happier, the people I communicate with are happier. Life is good.

The other day I received an email from a friend from Abilene while at work wanting to know what was up in my blogs. I answered him within a short amount of time. He responded. I responded. I had a productive work day, left for home made 3 calls on my trip home setting up supper, touching base with a work colleague, and ordering take-out to eat. I received a text message from my daughter, so I replied to her (yes, on the road). After eating, checked my email, blogged, twittered, worked virtaully with a student on virtual high school in its collaboration center, then went to bed with my cell phone's MP3 playing soothing strains through my earbuds. Yeah - living la vida buena, hermanos y hermanas!